Saturday

Good morning.  Another day of waking at a half decent time (6:15 today) and I'm starting to dare to hope that the recent phase of waking in the middle of the night has been left behind - wouldn't that be great!  The sun is coming out and everything outside looks bright and clean.  All the trees around my garden are now in leaf and it all looks colourful and happy.

I hit the first wall yesterday with the algebra.  It was the chapter on simplifying terms (if that means anything to you) and I made several errors.  A couple were due to my dyscalculic tendencies which causes the numbers to sort of 'slide around' in my brain and the others were because I just didn't know.  As it says that the next chapter (about brackets) is the hardest one in the whole algebra section, I think I will go over the previous chapter again, just to fix what I learnt in my mind.  There's so much to remember; it's a bit like a layer cake, one on top of another on top of another and if one layer isn't quite right, it affects the whole lot.  So that's today's work.

My OU friend, Alison, says that it's more or less GCSE standard at the beginning and ends up covering A level standard concepts so I reckon I'm not doing too badly really.  She also said that there was a geometry section in the longer course this one is lifted from and I always rather liked geometry so I might hunt for it and see if it's there.

Chris and I managed to get out video chat.  It was even newer to her than it was to me so we were both chuffed with ourselves and had a merry twenty minutes or so exchanging news and views.  Great fun.

I made my decisions about the paper pattern (V neck this time and I will dig out some more fabric to make the square necked one too, IF the V neck one goes OK), pinned the pattern and cut it out and even did some tacking and replaced the darts a bit.
So today I'm ready to sit at the sewing machine and, as there are no zips, buttons, etc, it may well be more or less finished by the end of the day.

Something energetic:
No PE with Joe today - after all, it is the weekend and the poor chap needs a break!  I will do the whole of Lindsey's programme instead of lifting sections out and I may take a look at Joe's exercises for the getting past its and see what they are like.

Something in the house/garden:
The weather is looking promising and it is definitely warmer again so I may get out there and deal with a few weeds that are daring to show their heads, not to mention getting on with a bit of planting in pots, etc.  I have half a bag of compost and some extremely well rotted manure (in a bag) so that will most likely be fine for what I want to do.
In the house, after tidying up the T shirts, I now have a free drawer so I can sort out a rather stuffed cupboard and get some things into that drawer.  I just need to think about how I want to do it.

Something social:
I'm hoping for a chat with Beth today - that would be super.

Something creative/entertaining:
The top, of course - I'm looking forward to that.  I do love using Mum's machine.
As for entertaining, I'm spoilt for choice.
I was able to buy the Merlin books for Kindle and actually there's five now, one of which I have never read.  The first three are the really mystical ones, written from Merlin's p.o.v., while the next is less 'fey'.  I have no idea about the last one.
Some of the big companies are coming forward to entertain on YouTube.
The National Theatre is doing some live streamings of shows that will then be available for several days afterwards.  I have little interest in the current one but next Thursday they start their stage version of Jane Eyre (7:pm, 9-4-20 and available until the 16th).  That I really am looking forward to watching.
Also, Andrew Lloyd Webber has 'released' (is that the word) some of his stage shows.  I think they are film versions rather than the live shows but that's OK.  This started last night with Joseph, the Donny Osmond version) which will be available all weekend.  Next weekend it's Jesus Christ, Superstar.
Here's a link to some info.  https://people.com/movies/andrew-lloyd-webber-musicals-free-youtube/
Sadly, I missed something the Bolshoi put on but maybe the National Ballet will come up trumps.

That's going a very long way round to say that my entertaining thing will be Joseph!  I can get YouTube on my telly which is great and the automatic subtitles really do help.

Now I'm wondering what other goodies will come up - if you notice any, please do let me know.

So that's today and possibly tomorrow will look similar!